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Jim Hickman matched those marks and he's not up there either. Sal Bando is also absent, despite 6.2 WAR and 24 win shares. Paul Blair (5.1, 22) also deserves a mention. And Tony Perez had 6.7 WAR, not 7.4 as shown above.

Morgan and Menke are a lot higher relative to position. The list isn't intended to be exhaustive. Part of the issue is I start with a totally different system to generate the names than the systems I'm listing.

Wow. WAR goes nuts over Gibson AGAIN? He's a full win ahead of Yaz, who is more than a win ahead of anyone else. And Win Shares has nothing like the Gibson ranking although they do like Yaz some. What is going on here? I thought I was the biggest Gibson fan here at BTF. - Brock

Yeah, Gibson was a ridiculous hitting pitcher in his best years. I remember that if the Cardinals had a rally going against the Mets, Gibson was not much of a sigh of relief as he came up.

He wasn't really so consistent a hitter every year, but he deserves extra credit for those big years. He was KILLING the matchup against so many opposing starters at a time where both SPs might well pitch into the 8th or beyond. It's another reason why the Cards, as they were listed on some Topps baseball cards in this era, won extra Gibson starts.

I remember Gibson being used as a pinch hitter, but that only happened a tiny number of times in his career, and even that tiny number of times included occasions when he was used as a pinch bunter. And, overall, he wasn't Earl Wilson as a hitter. But it's still true that it would have been insane to walk Dal Maxvill to get to Gibson.

Top ten according to my system (tentative list)
Tony Perez- as a 3B perez' strong offensive season puts him on top
Johnny Bench- if Bench would have played exclusively as a C, he probably would be on top(still might be)
Willie McCovey- a typical McCovey year
Rico Carty - don't let the fact that Carty had just over 550 PA prevent his monster year from being considered for the top 12 in MLB
Billie Williams- A very strong offensive season, but aided by his home park

Unlikely if the second 5 are good enough to consider for the top 12.
Bill Grabarkewitz (please forgive spelling)
Joe Torre
Rusty Staub
Bernie Carbo
Bobby Tolan

Here's the longer answer. The reason why I have significantly more NL players on my ballot than AL players is that many of the top AL candidates have weak resumes.

Consider Howard, Powell and Killebrew. They're the #2 through 4 hitters by OPS+ but they're all poor defensive players. Hondo is a disastrous -17 in fielding runs, Powell isn't too bad at -2 and Killebrew has a pretty poor -10. Compare those numbers to the similar hitters in the NL. Rico Carty, #2 in OPS+, is a decent +1 in fielding. Another corner outfielder, Billy Williams, is a similar +2. If those numbers were reserved- if the NL sluggers were awful defenders and the AL sluggers average ones- than my ballot would have reflected that. The difference between Carty at #9 and Howard at #20 is all defense.

I'm glad you asked though. While double-checking my numbers, I realized that I made an error in addition that gave Jenkins more credit he deserved. That error drops him behind Perry among pitchers and possibly behind Grabarkewitz as well.

Looks like another fun (read: undecided) election.
I messed about for awhile and got my numbers plugged in.
What I'm still missing and would like are Dan R's pitching numbers....
So if Dan R has new ones to post that would be AWESOME. If not, I'd still
like to have his old numbers (DL from MN, you're my ususual source for those).

Anyway, as is, here is my preliminary top "howevermany".
This includes no postseason bonus and a 10% catcher bonus...

Bill was a utility infielder for 7 MLB years, only one of which was any serious good. That was 1970 here, his second season. He made the All-Star team with a season that looked like he'd turn into Gil McDougald, if not something even better. He played third, short, and second, hit .289 with some power, was considered to be an OK shortstop, good at third and very good at second. I don't know why, but my first guess is an injury, but Billy never even came close to duplicating that 1970 campaign. He played part time, rotating between second, short, and third (mostly second), for various teams, because he just lost the ability to hit and was let go. - Brock

One of the SABR publications in the 1990s (maybe the Baseball Research Journal?) had a feature article about all the fluke seasons there were in the 1970 season -- Bill Grabarkewitz, Campaneris and Tony Taylor (125 OPS+) were among those listed.

Dan R,
I don't know for sure that I would have the time or that I have enough knowledge to do the legwork... but I would be interested to try!
I'm a little leery of actually posting my e-mail on here but I don't know if there is another way of doing this...

My godfather worked as part of the Giants grounds crew and would occasionally bring stuff home from the park. One of the things I got was a Billy Grabarkewitz bat that he'd cracked during a game. My godfather put it back together with a couple of small nails and some wood glue. I tried to use it in a pickup game and discovered a major leaguer uses a hell of a lot heavier bat than an 11 year old. I remember getting bats used by Dick Dietz and "Dirty Al" Gallagher around the same time.